Treading Water
by The Full Catastrophe
Summary: "This is the story of why we had to start calling Danny Fenton, Danny FINton. Get it, Danny? 'Cause you have FINS? Oh, I kill me." - summary by Tucker Foley.
1. Chapter 1

_I've never understood the MerDanny thing. I know this AU theme has been around for a while, but every time I encountered it, I just stopped and wondered – why? I mean, I love mermaids and I love Danny, but just how did these two in combination become an established thing?_

_You can imagine my surprise when I found myself fleshing out an entire AU universe for Danny Phantom revolving around merpeople. Whoops?_

_My favorite thing about Danny Phantom has always been the human characters. So, this story strives to maintain the human characters as closely to cannon as possible, merely replacing ghosts with merpeople and the Ghost Zone with the ocean. The ghostly characters did not cross over very well, being just too ghostly – so while some of their personas might show up (hint hint), the merpeople will mostly be OCs._

_Besides that, this story deals with many of the same themes as the show and many of the same character-to-character relationships and developments. I hope you can enjoy it._

_Danny Phantom belongs to Butch Hartman. _

* * *

><p><strong>TREADING WATER<strong>

**Chapter One**

_"Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part."_

― Hermann Broch

* * *

><p>Danny Fenton sat in the interior of the Fenton Family Merfolk Assault Craft – or as he and his sister preferred to call it, "the Boat" – feeling bitter about life, the world, and generally everything.<p>

First of all, he hated water. He had nearly drowned in the ocean as a kid, sucked out from the beach by a nasty riptide. If not for some observant surfers nearby, Danny would have died. Since then, he had been terrified of water and had never even learned how to swim.

His parents knew that. But did they care? Judging from how they forced him to go out on the Boat once a month, with nothing more than a life jacket and the words "You'll be fine!" – probably not.

That was second. He hated the Boat. He hated it, its name, and all it stood for. Seriously – the Fenton Family _Merfolk Assault Craft_. It was enough to send people running. It actually _had_ sent some people running.

It was no secret that the whole town thought the older Fentons were nut cases. Who wouldn't? They wore brightly colored wetsuits around town at all times and hunted mythical creatures for a living. At least they had lived in Amity Beach long enough for everyone to get used to their eccentricities, to learn that despite being fruitloops, the Fentons were harmless.

It was also enough time for Danny and his sister Jazz to convince people that they wanted nothing to do with their parents' work. So, while Jack and Maddie Fenton were greeted everywhere by looks ranging from strong disapproval to resignation, Danny and Jazz usually received ones of pity or, at best, no reaction at all.

Jazz had made up for her parents' shortcomings by being the best she could at everything she did. She was the smartest kid at Neptune High School, student council president, and had recently been voted by the student body as "most likely to succeed". She was also an insufferable know-it-all and consequently had no friends. If that bothered her or not, Danny couldn't tell.

Danny, meanwhile, had gone the other route, trying to be as normal as possible. He was remarkably unremarkable and proud of it. He maintained a B-average in school and was not particularly good at anything, unless playing video games and having a disproportionate knowledge about space exploration could be counted as talents. The second one maybe, but until he brought up his math and physics grades, it was entirely useless. So what if he and his best friend Tucker were called 'losers' by the popular kids at school? Most of the time they flew off the radar, and that was just how Danny liked it.

There was a knocking and some squeaks as the hatch opened, flooding the cabin with sunlight. Danny heard his dad's voice: "Where are you going, Jazzypants? You don't want to hear the story of how your mother and I first started hunting merpeople?"

The red-headed sixteen-year-old scoffed. "Like I haven't heard it a hundred times already? No thank you." She climbed the ladder down into the interior of the Boat and closed the hatch behind her. She glanced at Danny, hunched over and tense, and rolled her eyes, clearly finding his company only marginally better than her parents'. She threw herself into a chair and opened the book she was carrying. Probably _Psychology for Smart People _or some other nonsense.

"Dad regaling you with stories of their youth again?" said Danny, grinning smugly.

Jazz made a show of lowering her book. "Little brother stating the obvious again?"

Danny scowled at her. "Jeez. Sorry for trying to have a conversation."

"If I wanted to have a conversation, I wouldn't have come down here. Now, shh. I have to finish reading this by tomorrow to keep on schedule."

Jazz had recently discovered the reading list for graduate psychology programs and decided she needed to start reading the books now if she ever hoped to both finish them and fully understand them. It hardly mattered that graduate school was six years down the road. That was simply the type of insufferable know-it-all Jazz was.

Continuing with his list – third of all, Danny hated being stuck on a boat with his family on a perfectly good Sunday. The _last_ Sunday, in fact, of Danny's summer and the last day of his pre-high school life. Starting tomorrow, Danny would enter the ninth grade and start his new life at Neptune High. He had _wanted_ to spend this day savoring the last hours of freedom, preferably by playing games at the arcade with Tuck and washing it all down with a shake and fries at the Nasty Burger.

No. Instead he had been woken up at the crack of dawn and thrown on the Boat.

Danny sighed. Suddenly, he was feeling really cramped. Surely it had _nothing_ to do with the annoyance coming off of his sister in waves.

Speaking of waves… had they just gotten stronger? Yes, the boat was definitely rocking more than before. Danny was starting to feel sick. He needed air.

While the deck of the boat was a whole lot more dangerous than below, Danny ventured up there, first checking, of course, that his life jacket was secured and not going far from the hatch. It was a hot, sunny, August day, but currently the wind was whipping cool across the waves. Danny breathed it in with relish.

He quickly located his parents. His father was lounging at the wheel, leaning back in his seat with his feet propped up. Jack Fenton was larger than life – tall and broad and unbelievably clumsy for all of the strength he possessed. He also insisted on wearing a day-glow orange wetsuit at all times of day, so that he would always be ready to hit the water. Danny's mother, Maddie Fenton, was meanwhile seated on a bench, monitoring a device and occasionally taking notes. Unlike her husband, she was of normal proportions, with short auburn hair and purple eyes. But, unfortunately, she also insisted on constantly wearing a wetsuit. At least hers had the decency of being turquoise.

Danny still found it hard to believe that his parents had once been marine biologists. More importantly, they had been perfectly normal. There were pictures to prove it; there really had been pre-wetsuit days.

"Danny!" his father boomed upon seeing him. "I was just blathering on about my college days! Did I ever tell you the story of how your mother and I started hunting merpeople?"

"Uh, you kind of tell us every time we come out here, Dad."

Maddie shot her son a sympathetic, knowing smile and recorded another number in her notebook.

Completely disregarding what his son had said, Jack continued telling his story. "Well, when your mother and I were in college, we were studying to be marine biologists, along with our best friend, Vlad! You know good old Vlad. During our senior year, we all got the opportunity to go out on the ocean with our professor's team to study whales. It was going fine, until one night, the water suddenly went flat. We tried using our motor to sail through it, and even that wouldn't move us. It was all very strange. Then, if you can believe it, the water came alive, looking just like ropes, or maybe tentacles, and it started grabbing people right off the deck!

"We were all pretty shocked. It's not every day you see something like that. I was the first to react in a way that wasn't, you know, screaming – and I immediately grabbed our prof and your mother and hauled them below deck, and I was just on my way to get Vladdy when the water ropes got to him, too! Pulled him right over before I even had a chance to grab on. I thought about diving in after him, but honestly, I was pretty shaken up by the whole thing. By that point, the whole team had been swept right overboard! I ended up going down to hide with your mother and our prof to wait it out. We didn't come out until morning. We thought we were the only ones to survive.

"They never found the other members of the team, and for a couple of months, we thought Vladdy was a goner, too. No one would believe us when we tried to tell them what happened. Our dear old professor even lost her job over it." Jack shook his head sadly. "We even started to doubt ourselves. That is, until Vlad washed up on the shore several miles north of Amity Beach! Turns out he was being held captive by some merfolk for all that time. He managed to escape somehow – too traumatized to ever tell us how – and the rest of the team, well…"

"Yeah, I know. The merpeople ate them," finished Danny blandly. Jazz wasn't kidding when she said she had heard the story a hundred times. A few months ago, she had explained her theory on their father's bizarre, frequent retelling of the story like this: Jack liked to tell it when he was feeling discouraged about the existence of merpeople, as a reminder. It was like his mantra.

Danny guessed today was one of those days.

Jack raised his brows and nodded emphatically. "They did indeed! But thanks to Vlad, we now know all about the threat of merpeople and even have some knowledge about how to fight them!"

Danny added another mark to his list. That was right – fourth of all, he hated Vlad Masters, the biggest fruitloop of them all. He had only seen this man a few times in his life, but he had always struck Danny as a creep. Mr. Masters was some sort of billionaire, having giving up ocean science in exchange for business, but it was his DALV Corp that funded Fentonworks. In other words, it was Vlad Masters's fault that the Fentons had the means to turn merhunting into a career. Maybe if this rich college buddy wasn't encouraging Danny's parents with fat checks in the mail every year, they would have just kept on being perfectly normal, respectable scientists.

"So, son, that is why we do what we do. If we didn't, no one else would."

Wondering what Tucker was up to, Danny said, distractedly, "Right. And how many merpeople have you found so far?"

"Well, none… But, they are definitely out there! It's just a matter of time before we crack their nest. It's somewhere in these waters."

His parents had numerous buoys monitoring for the merpeople's chemical signatures – whatever that meant – but the majority of their hunting involved investigating mysterious disappearances along the North Carolina coast, or taking the Boat out and scanning the ocean floor for suspicious activity. Like they were doing today.

They spent the rest of their time inventing different weapons and shields to use against the merpeople's supposed 'powers', and deciding that the MAC was not sufficient for direct offense, they had spent the last five years designing some sort of submarine – the Fenton Siren Speeder – that they hoped to finish sometime within the next few weeks. It was supposed to withstand enormous amounts of pressure while still being able to maneuver at remarkable speeds, all the while toting various anti-merfolk weapons and shields. It would, in his parents' words, "revolutionize merhunting", taking it "to the next level".

"Yeah, so anyway, when are we going home?"

Maddie lowered her equipment to the bench beside her and looked at her son, frowning worriedly. "Are you okay, sweetie? Are you feeling sick?"

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "Actually, yeah, a little."

"That's right," Jack said, "you start school tomorrow, don't you, Danno?" He shuddered. "I remember high school. I'd be sick, too!"

Maddie's frown deepened. "Maybe we should head back. You shouldn't be sick on your first day."

"Really?" Danny gaped. He'd never convinced them to go home early, no matter how much he protested.

He never thought he'd say this, but –

"- thank God for school," said Danny, blasting three cyber-clones off of the bridge.

"_Four words I never thought I'd hear in one sentence_," Tucker replied. His avatar cleared the remaining enemies, and the two started collecting the drops.

It was Sunday evening. For once, the Fentons were home early after a day of family merhunting, and Danny was using his precious free time to play Doom 2 with Tucker. Ironically, the new Doom game had come out just three days ago – just in time for school to start. The gaming company was probably conspiring against mankind, but Danny wasn't going to dwell on it. There was no time to waste.

"I'll say," said Danny. "How far you think we can get tonight?"

"_I'm thinking we can be to the Lagoon of Viral Insanity by midnight, no sweat. That one player's already cleared it."_

"You mean the guy going solo through here? The guy who's never died once and has the highest level in the game?"

"_Yeah, him!_"

"Tuck, I think you must have missed some of the sarcasm in my voice."

"_No, seriously! If HPcthulhu13 could do it solo, the two of us should be able to get there easily. Come on!"_

And so, the two boys played late into the night, long past either of their mothers' warnings to go to sleep, and only when they had reached the Lagoon of Viral Insanity and defeated its boss at three in the morning did they quit playing.

Seven o'clock a.m. rolled around way too soon. Danny struggled to wake up, to shower, to put on the most basic outfit, and he was still red-eyed with fatigue while he ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Not unusual and not surprising, he was alone in the house that morning. Jazz had already driven to Neptune High by that point, to take care of some sort of welcome speech she would be giving during the school assembly, and their parents always hit the water before sunup.

His parents had many years ago dubbed their house 'Fentonworks'; the name represented not only their location and business, but also their absurd desire to slap the name 'Fenton' on everything they touched. Danny didn't especially like it, but all of Amity Beach knew their address as Fentonworks, and there was little he could do now to change that.

Fentonworks was located on a beach-side cliff at the north side of town. The property and the beach below it for about one-fourth of a mile was privately owned by the Fentons, paid for by Mr. Masters. They had built a dock there where they kept the MAC and several other, smaller boats. Their main lab, meanwhile, was built into the side of the cliff itself, directly below the house, and could be reached by a set of outdoor steps or by the elevator… in the kitchen.

Afraid someone who needed merperson help might not be able to find Fentonworks, Jack and Maddie had installed a huge, neon, arrow-shaped sign on the front of the house, pointing directly at it.

And this was what Danny called 'home'.

He gave the monstrosity little thought as he left that morning. He met Tucker Foley at the other boy's house a few blocks over, and together, they walked to school. In silence. Tucker looked quite as bad as Danny felt.

"Whose idea was it to go all the way through the Lagoon of Viral Insanity?" said Danny as the high school came into view ten minutes later. He was not looking forward to stepping through those doors.

"Shut up," retorted Tucker weakly.

Sooner than either would have liked, Danny and Tucker were at the front of the school. A too-cheerful banner stretched across the entryway, reading, "Welcome, new students, to Neptune High School! Home of the Neptune Narwhals!" in bold blue and gold letters, accompanied by a smiling, cartoon narwhal wearing a football uniform.

Danny and Tucker walked inside, partially driven forward by the crowd of students flooding the hall. They escaped long enough to dig out their schedules and dove back in to find their lockers. Danny's was closest, so they stopped there first, and Tucker played on his PDA while Danny tried out his locker combination.

"Hey! Fentina!"

Danny groaned. He didn't even have time for a sarcastic quip before he was being shouldered roughly into the lockers by a big, blonde boy wearing a letterman jacket. The football player laughed and high-fived his friends, saying, "Nothing like starting off the year with a little bit of nerd-bashing." Sneering at Danny, he added, "Smell you later, Fenturd."

Danny watched the boy walk away, rubbing his injured arm. "Great. I'm still his favorite."

The football player was called Dash Baxter. Despite being a freshman, Dash was already in line for being star quarterback of the Neptune Narwhals, and he had been 'king' of the A-listers during junior high, his girlfriend Paulina Sanchez reigning at his side. No doubt it would be the same, and probably worse, now that they were in high school.

Tucker shrugged. "Hey, could be worse."

"Says the guy who _wasn't_ just shoved into the lockers."

The techno-geek raised his hands defensively. "I'm just saying – at least you're not like Mikey, having to do Dash's homework all the time."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. And yet another reason it pays to not have good grades."

"You said it."

Tucker and Danny had been friends ever since elementary school. Danny had had a hard time making friends back then, mostly because none of the other kids' parents had wanted their children getting to close to the Fentons. The Foleys had been the only ones to take pity on Danny and not separate Tucker from him.

It may have had something to do with how Tucker was also having a hard time connecting to anyone; Tucker had been a cheerful, friendly child, but all he had wanted to do was play video games, while the other kids his age were all playing at the beach. Danny had already had his drowning incident by that point, so when he found a kid who was one – willing to talk to him and two – not the least bit interested in swimming… Well, there had been no separating them.

These days, they still did everything together. They had never stopped being outcasts, and even though it made it hard to find a girlfriend, they usually didn't care about where they were on the social ladder.

But speaking of girlfriends… Just as Danny managed to open his locker, Tucker – slack-jawed – tapped him on the shoulder and pointed.

Gliding down the hall now was the flock of A-list maidens. At their head was Dash's girlfriend, Paulina Sanchez, who had been captain of the cheerleading team in junior high school and was aiming for the position again. At her side was her best friend Star, who was currently dating Dash's best friend Kwan. These four – Dash, Kwan, Paulina, and Star – formed the heart of the popular kids in grade nine, while everyone else revolved around them.

While Paulina and Star were obviously taken, the other A-list girls were splendidly single. Danny had actually had a long-time crush on Valerie Gray, who had venomously ripped out and stomped on his heart last year when he had attempted to act on those feelings. Since then, he had just admired her from afar. Tucker, on the other hand, would be happy with any girl who would be willing to give him the time of day.

The sea of students parted in the girls' wake, and streams of drool could be seen sliding down some chins.

Summer had done something to the girls. Something was different. They seemed _softer_, more womanly, more beautiful.

At the back of the pack trailed the most enigmatic of the A-list girls, Samantha Manson. Her family was filthy rich and lived in a huge mansion on the west side of town; apparently someone in her family had been the one to invent the machine that swirled cellophane around deli toothpicks, and they had amassed a fortune from it. Unlike the other girls, Samantha chose to wear dark, muted colors to match her black hair, and she was more often than not reading books while the other girls did their makeup. She had always seemed aloof, almost to the point of looking bored, no matter where she was or what she was doing. That is, except for when she was swimming. Swimming seemed to be the only thing for which Samantha showed any passion.

In the middle of his gaping, somehow Danny's eyes met Samantha's purple ones. He took in her subtle, dark eye makeup and intense gaze for a second, before her ever-uninterested eyes slid away.

Danny had a brief thought – she could be very pretty if she did not look so sad all of the time.

As quickly as it crossed his mind, it was gone, just like the A-list girls. Sighing wistfully, Tucker said, "I guess I'd better find my locker."

Equally wistful, for a certain Miss Gray who had been looking strong and capable in yellow today, Danny replied, "Yeah…"

While they walked to Tucker's locker, Tucker remarked, "You know, maybe high school won't be all that bad."

Danny nodded, feeling uncharacteristically optimistic. "You're right. Avoid Dash, get good grades, find a girlfriend by prom. I think we can do this." Even he, Danny Fenton of the Freaky Fentons, could have a normal, high school life. He smiled at the thought.

Tucker held out his fist. "Fist bump promise?"

Danny knocked his knuckles against Tuck's, grinning. "Fist bump promise."

Little did Danny know, keeping that promise would be much harder than he could ever have anticipated. And all of his problems, just like his first day of school at Neptune High, would begin with Dash Baxter.

* * *

><p><em>So much exposition! But, I think the stage is sufficiently set and all of the AU elements deployed. Now the plot can move forward in chapter two. I'll try to have it up soon. Review and share your thoughts with me! <em>  
><em>Until next time~<em>


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"_He was swimming in a sea of other people's expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that."_

― Robert Jordan

* * *

><p>High school clearly was not going to be a walk in the park, but all things considered, Danny's first day was going well.<p>

They had had to sit through the obligatory welcome assembly, during which Jazz gave an 'inspiring' speech that none of the students listened to, followed by a speech by the vice principal and head English teacher, Mr. Lancer, about how their entire futures depended on these next four years. That had turned Danny's blood cold. So maybe Lancer was being over-dramatic, but his words rang true – if Danny did not get good grades here, he wouldn't get into any prestigious science or engineering programs in college and then would never get into NASA's space program.

It instilled a sense of urgency in Danny that he didn't know what to do with, and he sat through first period tapping his fingers against his thighs.

First period was Freshman English with Lancer, who was even less pleasant up close. He carried himself with a smug air and had a voice that droned. Jazz had once told Danny that Lancer liked to shout out book titles – and while it was funny, it was usually when something bad happened. That was looking to be the most interesting part of the class, but even it would be lost on Danny, who wouldn't know most of the titles anyway.

It was an interesting mix of people in first period English, almost like the office ladies who made the schedules had wanted to have a social experiment.

… and as soon as he made that comparison, Danny realized he'd been spending too much time around Jazz.

… but it was true. In this single classroom, there were football jocks, cheerleaders, band geeks, choir nerds, honors-track students, a couple of science/math protégés (who so happened to be in the chess club), some _actual_ nerds – the kind who played table-top games like D&D or Magic the Gathering – and finally, the two outcasts who didn't fit into any group and had just been dubbed 'losers', Danny and Tucker. They were just missing some Goth students or the collection would have been complete.

It was so that, as soon as every student realized who their allies were, there was a mad dash to grab seats near the people they knew. Danny and Tucker, used to being walked over, had grown really good at moving quickly around people and were able to grab some prime seats in the back of the room. Sliding into them, they grinned at each other and exchanged a high-five.

"Yes!"

As it turned out, Samantha Manson either was not very good at moving through people or just didn't care very much, because she was the last person to claim a seat, and the only seat left open was next to Danny, between him and the window.

Paulina Sanchez saw this and gave Samantha a look that might have been called 'sympathetic' by a person who did not know how to read human facial expressions. To everyone else, it looked more like 'spitefully amused'.

"Oh, that's too bad," said the Latina, barely hiding a smile.

Samantha Manson just shrugged and sat down, immediately drawing out a book.

Tucker jabbed Danny sharply in the side. Ignoring Danny's wince and glare, he gestured frantically at the girl to Danny's left. The message was clear – this is your chance!

Danny figured that was true. If he didn't suck up the courage to talk to this popular-but-sad-looking girl right now, he knew he would sit next to her for an entire year in silence.

He swallowed nervously. He was so bad at talking to pretty girls. And Samantha Manson was pretty, no doubt about it. She had smooth black hair that was cut at chin length and a widow's peak that made her bangs have a 'swept' look as they hung to one side of her face. She wore a black and purple tank-top over simple jeans, although both were probably designer brands. Her skin was fair, unlike most of the very tan girls on the A-list, causing her dark make-up to be dramatic over her features.

To be honest, Danny had never been so close to her before. He almost had the urge to make sure he was wearing pants. No, scratch the almost part, his eyes had already flicked down there – and yes, there were pants. At least he had that much going for him.

No, everyone else had pants, too. Darn it!

_Come on, Fenton. Cool it. You can do this_.

Danny cleared his throat. "Uh… Hi. I'm Danny."

Samantha blinked and looked up from her book suspiciously. "Why are you talking to me?" she asked. Before Danny could answer, she continued, purple eyes narrowed. "Look, if you're trying to get me to pay attention to you because I'm 'rich' or 'popular' or 'friends' with Paulina, you're wasting _your_ time, and you're wasting mine. I don't enjoy leading people on or playing with their feelings, and shallow losers like you who think they can climb the social ladder by following around girls like a puppy dog are just pathetic. So, save us both the trouble."

She turned back to her book.

Danny gaped. He heard Tucker snickering behind him.

Okay, so Danny was used to being shut down by people on the A-list. Dash had bullied him since elementary school, Valerie had put a dagger in his heart last year, and Paulina looked at Danny like he was some gum she had found stuck to the bottom of her shoe. But all he had said to this girl was 'Hi'. She had no reason to assume the worst about him.

Danny really hated being called a 'loser'. His embarrassment evaporated.

"Hey, I just wanted to introduce myself, say 'Hi', because you look so freakin' lonely all the time. Whatever. _Clearly_ it was my mistake." He glared down at his desk, wishing Tucker would stop laughing.

"You think I look lonely?" asked Samantha. Danny glanced back at her; she looked surprised.

"Well, yeah," he muttered.

Lancer chose that moment to walk into the room and begin class. He passed out a syllabus and droned on about it for the rest of the period, and Danny's thoughts soon drifted away from both Samantha and English class, back to thoughts of NASA and his future, and his fingers started tapping nervously against his thighs.

Because of the assembly, they were on a shortened schedule. All of the classes that day were about the syllabi, and it grew boring really quickly. On the whole, though, all of Danny's classes looked doable, as long as he applied himself. His nerves faded as the day continued.

After English, Danny did not see Tucker again until lunch, during which time they grabbed a table together.

"Dude," said Tucker, chuckling. He took a big bite from his hamburger, and through his mouthful continued, "I can't get over what Samantha Manson said to you."

Danny scowled. "I don't understand why being 'popular' makes people think they have the right to be mean to everyone else. It doesn't make sense."

As if on cue, Dash Baxter passed behind Danny and roughly shoved the back of his head, laughing.

"My case in point," said Danny, patting down his hair. "My parents would kill me if I acted like that. They'd literally take me out to sea and throw me in with the merpeople. I mean, I'm sure I'd drown first, but you get the picture."

"Yeah, my parents, too," said the techno-geek. "Only with fewer mythical creatures. Speaking of mythical creatures… you up for some more Doomed tonight?"

"Duh. Of course."

Tucker slurped loudly at his soda. "Oh yeah, did you notice how she stared at you for the rest of class?"

Danny frowned. "What? Who?"

"Who do you think, Mr. Clueless? Samantha Manson."

His brows rose. "She did?" He hadn't noticed at all.

"Yeah! You must have left an impression on her. I wouldn't be surprised if she never spoke to you again. That, or completely ruined your high school existence. Girls are scary."

Danny slapped a hand over his face. "Great, Fenton. First day of high school, and you're already blowing it."

"Don't give up, Danny. We're getting girlfriends this year, remember? And I think I have just the plan. This weekend, you and I are going to the beach."

Danny's look was skeptical. "The beach? As in, 'fun in the sun' and 'hitting the surf' and all that?"

"Exactly," said Tucker, grinning. "Listen, it's fool-proof. Girls like guys who are athletic, tanned, and comfortable walking around without shirts. We just have to show them that's who we are, too."

"Except, we're none of those things."

"You're missing the point, Danny. Girls like those types of guys, and so girls go to the beach, where those guys are. They don't go to the arcade, where we are. So, we're totally off their radars right now. To get _on_ their radars, we need to go to them, and therefore, to the beach."

"Tuck, there's still the problem of us being scrawny, pale, and most comfortable when fully clothed."

"Walk the walk, my friend. Walk the walk."

"Right," Danny drawled.

"Then you're with me! Saturday?" Tucker held out a hand.

"Though I'll probably regret it…" Danny grasped his friend's hand and shook. "Fine."

They spent the rest of lunch strategizing over how to get to the next boss in Doomed.

Yes, all things considered, Danny's first day at Neptune High was going better than he had hoped – that was, until the end of sixth period.

It was math class with Mr. Falluca. The teacher had finished going over his syllabus early and had decided to let the students – whose attention spans had become nonexistent – talk among themselves for the last few minutes of class.

Tucker wasn't in this class with him, so Danny spent the time staring at the clock, thinking about how he would take a nap when he got home, and trying to block out the voices of Dash and his friends, who were sitting behind him. Apparently try-outs for the football team were happening during the next period, and Dash was 'pumped'.

Danny couldn't care less. All it meant was that Dash would become quarterback and have yet another reason to like himself too much.

Finally, the bell rang. Danny stood up, grabbed his books, and started walking to the door of the classroom, only to trip as someone stuck their foot out in front of him. Danny fell to the floor, catching himself on his hands but otherwise sprawling out on the ground.

Whoever had tripped Danny probably had not meant for Dash Baxter, who had been following right behind the smaller boy, to trip, too. But Dash, not paying attention, stumbled over Danny's legs and toppled forward, and Danny heard a sickening 'smack' as Dash's face slammed into a desk before both Dash and the desk crashed to the floor. Danny quickly scrambled to his feet and backed away.

The room went quiet. Dash groaned and sat up, holding a hand to his face in an attempt to stop the blood that was quite literally gushing from his nose. "_Fenton,_" he growled, voice slightly garbled. The phrase 'if looks could kill' passed through Danny's mind.

Mr. Falluca was soon at the blonde's side. "Mr. Baxter! Come on, let's get you to the nurse's office."

"Nurse?" Dash parroted incredulously. "But I've got football tryouts next period!"

"And a broken nose," said the math teacher. Despite being a foot shorter than the boy, Mr. Falluca was somehow able to wrestle the reluctant Dash to his feet and guide him out of the room. They left a trail of blood droplets in their wake.

The students all turned their stares on Danny, who gulped. Why did it suddenly feel like he was on the executioner's block?

Danny hurried to his final class of the day – Spanish. Thankfully, Tucker was there, too. By unspoken agreement, they claimed two desks at the back of the room.

Tucker noticed Danny's pale face immediately. "You okay?"

Danny shook his head. "What do you think Dash would do to a guy who broke his nose?"

"Wait, you broke Dash's nose?"

"Kind of. Not really. I mean, _yeah_, but I didn't mean to. Someone tripped me first!"

"Hang on, start over. You broke Dash's nose," said Tucker, deadpan.

"It was an accident. Someone tripped me, and I tripped Dash, and Dash hit a desk with his face. You should have seen the blood. It was everywhere."

"I wish I could have seen it. That's awesome!"

"No, it's not," said Danny, turning two shades paler. He buried his face in his arms. "Dash is going to kill me."

"Yeah, probably," said Tucker lightly.

"Not helping, Tuck."

Spanish passed in a flash. Danny hurried to his locker, agreeing to meet Tucker at the front of the school. He just wanted to get his bag and go home. Maybe if he could avoid Dash until the next day, the blonde's anger would cool overnight.

Danny opened his locker, only for it to slam shut at second later. Dash held his hand against it, fingers splayed. He loomed over Danny threateningly. Danny saw that Dash's nose was red, and he had bits of bloody gauze sticking out his nostrils. Already, bruises were forming under his eyes – which were livid.

"Fenton," Dash growled, narrowing his eyes. Danny could have sworn that the metal of his locker was groaning under Dash's weight.

"Uh, Dash," said Danny, taking a step back. Dash took a step forward and fisted the front of Danny's shirt, pulling the smaller boy forward.

The other students in the hallway hushed, either evacuating the scene or gathering in a circle to watch.

"G-glad to see you're feeling better," Danny stammered.

"Feeling better?" hissed Dash; flecks of spit hit Danny's face. "Do you realize what you've done?"

"Well, technically, it was-"

"I missed football tryouts because of you!"

"…So?"

Dash shook Danny, rattling his head. "So? So I won't get to be quarterback! I won't even get to be on the varsity team!"

"What's the big deal? Aren't there make-ups?" said Danny, trying to pull out of Dash's grip. He couldn't even budge.

"A make-up? Are you kidding? For a guy who broke his nose by tripping over a dweeb? I don't think so!"

"You'll still get to be on the team! E-eventually…"

"That's not good enough! I was supposed to be the quarterback! My future was resting on this. You've ruined my life!"

"Don't you think you're over-reac-" Danny could not get the words out, because Dash punched him in the face.

Still, the would-be football jock did not release the younger boy, so his punch just flung Danny's head back, only for it to whip back forward. Dash pulled his hand back and struck again, hitting Danny's eye, and this time Danny fell to the ground.

His vision was swimming. He was pretty sure his lip was split, because that was probably blood he tasted. His face hurt so badly he could hardly feel it, and Danny wondered if Dash had knocked his eye out. Could a person hit hard enough to do that?

Suddenly, Danny couldn't breathe, and his back was colliding with the lockers.

Oh. It seemed Dash had kicked him in the gut.

"_Lord of the Flies, _Mr. Baxter! What are you doing?!"

Through tears and wheezing, Danny watched a sideways image of Mr. Lancer grabbing Dash's arms behind his back.

"Mr. Foley, get Daniel out of here!"

Was Tucker here? He must have been. Danny was now being led down the hall, stumbling, one arm wrapped over Tucker's shoulders.

"You'll pay for this, Fenton!" Dash shouted after them. "You hear me? You'll pay!"

Dash's threat sent a shiver down Danny's spine, and then they were outside.

Tucker led Danny down the street, to the edge of campus, before Danny gestured that he wanted to sit down. His friend gingerly helped him sit on the grass and then sat beside him. They were both quiet for a minute.

"You know," said Tucker soberly, "when I said he'd probably kill you, I wasn't being serious."

Danny prodded his face. Thankfully, he could see straight again, and his breathing had calmed down. Still, everything hurt, and he really, _really_ wanted to crawl in bed, for several days. "You think I have a concussion?"

"Did you hit your head?"

"No. But Dash did."

"I'll say. But I think your face took the brunt of it. You look like, like… well, whatever you look like, it's not pretty."

"That bad?" It had to be bad if Tucker couldn't even think of a joke to make about it.

Danny's bottom lip _was_ split, and the inside was cut open, too, where it had hit his teeth. He could already feel it starting to swell. Dash had also hit Danny's eye, and while Danny could see through it, it felt like it was also swelling. As for his stomach… simply put, it hurt to move.

"You wanna go to the hospital?"

"_You're_ suggesting that I go to the hospital? You hate hospitals."

Tucker shrugged. "Hey, they do pick-ups. Obviously I wouldn't go with you."

Danny shook his head and then winced, feeling like his blood was sloshing around in his head. "Nah, I'll probably be okay. Just gotta get home. And try to explain this to my mom."

"Fun."

"If I'm lucky, I can just sneak up to my room and avoid my family until I heal. What is that, like, a couple of weeks?"

Danny was not lucky. Tucker dropped Danny off at his front door before also heading home. As soon as Danny opened the door, he heard from the kitchen – "Danny! You're home! How was your first-"

Maddie Fenton rounded the corner into the living room; she was wearing an apron over her wetsuit, probably in the middle of making dinner. She froze upon seeing her son, and then rushed to his side.

"What happened?!" She took his shoulder in one hand and grabbed his chin with the other, turning his head side to side as she inspected the damage. "Who did this to you?"

Danny avoided meeting her eyes. "It… it's nothing. I… fell down the stairs. Like, from the top." Danny had been bullied at school for years; he had sworn high school would be a new start. He was ashamed to admit the truth to his mom – that he was still a weakling and an outcast and a loser.

Danny could not tell if she believed him or not. She led him into the kitchen and sat him at the kitchen table. Maddie pulled a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, wrapped it in a towel, and guided Danny's hand to hold it against his eye. "Here, sweetheart… I'll find something to clean up your lip."

"Thanks, Mom," Danny mumbled. Maddie walked out of the room just as Jazz walked into it. She sat down across from Danny, placing several textbooks and a notebook on the table. Danny wasn't surprised that she was already home; being able to drive had its perks.

"Still being bullied, huh? Was it Dash Baxter?"

Danny readjusted the peas. "What, you didn't see? I thought the whole school was there."

"What do you mean?" Jazz's aloofness finally melded into sincere concern.

"Dash tried to kill me," Danny explained. He paused, and his eyes widened in horror. "I think he really wanted to kill me."

"Come on, Dash is not that great, but he's no killer."

"I don't know. If Lancer hadn't stopped him, I'd look a lot worse." He looked up at his older sister. "Don't tell Mom and Dad?"

"Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. What's your story this time?"

"Stairs."

"Smooth."

They sat in silence for another second, before Jazz smiled sadly at Danny. "Are you going to be okay? You know you can talk to me if you ever want to."

"I'm fine. But… thanks." He offered her a small smile in return.

Just then, their mother walked back into the room, carrying a bottle of peroxide, a cotton swab, and a band-aid. She knelt in front of Danny and began to clean up his face.

Maddie tutted. "You're going to have to be more careful, Danny. You're going to seriously hurt yourself someday."

Danny flinched as she dabbed at his face. "Yeah, I know. I'll try."

* * *

><p>The next day at school, Danny discovered that Dash had been suspended for three weeks. Not only that, he had lost all extracurricular privileges – which meant he wouldn't be allowed on the football team in any capacity.<p>

Three weeks with no Dash. Danny should have been happy. Somehow, he could only feel dread at the news.

This wasn't over.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Hello! First, thank you all for your great response to the first chapter! I hope this one didn't disappoint, even though there has still been no merperson action. I needed to lay some more pieces, and my chapters usually don't surpass 4,000 words. _

... _I can definitely say that the next chapter will deliver. *wink wink*_

_Until next time! _


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

"_Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills."_

― Ambrose Bierce

* * *

><p>If Danny had to sum up Tuesday, he would use the word "suck", as in "it did". He might have chosen a better word, but his vocabulary was not that large. If there was a word that captured the taste of sour milk as an emotion, he would have picked that one.<p>

No one – among the ninth graders, the only ones who actually cared – knew how to behave toward Danny, nor did Danny know how to behave toward them. That much was clear as soon as he walked through the front doors of Neptune High that morning and most of the students stopped talking to openly stare at him.

His face was not helping matters any; it was practically a neon sign flashing "I was wailed on". Despite the efforts of the frozen peas, his eye had nearly swollen shut, and it was so blue it was almost black. His lip was still swollen and was marred by a cut that kept reopening.

Danny did his best to ignore everyone, thinking of the way they usually ignored him, and walked to his locker. Tucker stuck by his side like a loyal guard dog, eyes peeled for any sign of Dash or Dash's friends, ready to shout for a teacher at the first sign of trouble. They had yet to hear the news.

When Danny reached his locker, he was almost surprised not to see a huge hand print sunk into the door. He opened it and found his backpack inside, which he had never claimed yesterday. The books and binder he had been carrying before Dash attacked him, however, were nowhere to be found.

Mikey – who was even shorter and scrawnier than Danny, if that were possible – appeared at his side. Mikey was one of the only other people that Dash picked on more than Danny; in fact, whenever Danny felt sorry for himself, he would think, 'at least I'm not Mikey'.

"Heya, Danny," Mikey said, then sniffed and pushed his glasses up his nose. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a million bucks," Danny grumbled at his emptier-than-he-had-hoped locker. What, had Dash burned all of his stuff, too?

"Oh, you should be," Mikey continued, apparently oblivious to Danny's sarcasm. "You're, like, a hero!"

"Yeah, I feel really heroic."

"Haven't you heard the news? Dash has been suspended!"

This time, Danny froze and actually looked at the other boy. "What."

Mikey was bouncing on his toes in excitement. "Yeah, for three whole weeks! And that's not all. Get this – he's been permanently banned from the football team. You've dethroned the king, man!"

Danny gaped, and then his blood turned to ice. "I, uh… Look, Mikey. I didn't do anything." He added under his breath, "And apparently in three weeks, I'll be dead for real."

"Sure, sure," said Mikey, winking obviously and elbowing Danny in his, admittedly, very sore ribs. Danny cringed and hopped back a foot.

"Look, just forget about it, okay?" said Danny, nervously. He turned to Tucker, who was in an equal state of shock. "C'mon, Tuck."

They visited Tucker's locker and then headed to Lancer's classroom. Danny looked at his feet on the way, but Tucker made sure to point out the number of people – Dash's friends – who were glaring at him on the way.

Once in the classroom, Danny tried to make a bee-line to his desk, but Lancer stopped him at the front of the room. "Ah, Mr. Fenton."

Danny winced, and then hesitantly turned to look at the balding English teacher. He knew what his face looked like, but Lancer didn't. The older man gasped.

"Oh… how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," said Danny, shrugging.

"Just a moment," said Lancer, and he went to his desk, shortly returning with a stack of school supplies that Danny immediately recognized.

"My stuff!"

"You were gone by the time I realized you were missing them," said Lancer, handing them over. "I'm guessing you've heard about Mr. Baxter?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Of course," replied Mr. Lancer, more to himself than to his student. "I forget that rumor spreads like wildfire in a high school."

Danny gestured with his books. "Um, thanks. And… for yesterday. Thanks."

The teacher looked at him pityingly. "You're welcome. Though if I had gotten there sooner…"

Danny flushed red, and he rushed to his seat, burying his face – gently – in his arms. If there was one thing he hated more than being wailed on, it was that _look_. The look that rubbed his nose in the fact that he was weak and couldn't stand up for himself. He ended up feeling more angry than grateful towards Lancer.

He heard a girl chuckling on his left side. He turned his head and looked at Samantha, partly in curiosity and partly in annoyance. To his further surprise, she was not looking at him. He followed her gaze to… Paulina.

The Latina girl was talking to the A-listers around her, casting Danny a look every few seconds that could have peeled paint. And Samantha was laughing.

"I haven't seen Paulina this pissed in a long time," said Samantha, grinning. It took Danny a moment to realize that she was talking to him. "You should have heard her this morning. She's furious because Dash isn't going to be 'star quarterback', and so they can't be the perfect couple anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if she breaks up with him soon."

"Sorry," Danny murmured into his arms.

"What are you sorry for? It's not like they don't deserve it."

Danny frowned confusedly at Samantha, looking at her more closely. "Aren't you friends with her?"

The girl's eyes widened, and then she turned away, looking out the window. "Right. Yeah."

Danny's mood soured further. Suddenly, it seemed like ages ago that he was excited to be sitting next to this girl. But these were the type of people who were popular – people who laughed at their own friends' misfortune. He buried his face again, muttering, "Some friend you are". He was too tired to care if she heard him or not.

* * *

><p>Tuesday passed, and soon the rest of the week did, too. To Danny's surprise, none of Dash's friends did anything more to him than glare; same for Paulina. By Wednesday, the swelling had gone out of his face, and by Thursday, everyone had stopped paying any attention to him. He did his best to ignore Samantha in every class he had with her, and as far as he could tell, she was paying him the same courtesy. High school life was starting to feel normal. There was even homework.<p>

Then the week ended, and it was Saturday.

Tucker's beach plan was still in place.

Danny, very reluctantly, met him that afternoon outside of the "Nasty Shack", as the Nasty Burger's on-beach location was called. Danny was wearing a pair of red swimming trunks, some flip-flops, and a white tank top, which despite Tucker's scheme would be staying safely on Danny's shoulders. He still had a big, foot-shaped bruise across his ribs, which his already pale skin only helped to stand out. That certainly did not need to see the light of day. Besides, he would not be going anywhere near the water.

Danny's face had healed only partially, and so he hid his eye behind a pair of dark sunglasses. He had also applied sunscreen – liberally.

Tucker arrived, looking every bit as out-of-place as Danny felt, only in a blunderingly confident sort of way.

The public beach was in the southern part of Amity Beach, several miles down from Fentonworks. In the summer, it was packed with people every day. There was still another month of beach-going weather in the future, and the residents of Amity Beach were going to take advantage of every minute of it. From the sky, Danny imagined the sand would not be visible for all the towels and umbrellas, and the water would be teeming like it was filled with fish. It was so crowded today, Danny wondered if the whole town had shown up.

He eyed all of this dubiously and said, "Somehow I don't think 'well-tenderized dork' is going to attract many girls, Tuck. Are you sure I need to be here?" Danny figured he would try one last time to escape.

"Are you kidding?" said Tucker, slapping Danny on the back. "You're popular! You're who everyone has been talking about."

"You might be confusing 'popular' with 'notorious'."

"Notorious? Nice one."

"Yeah? It was my word of the day."

Danny felt like he owed Mr. Lancer something after the teacher had basically saved his life, so he had decided to learn a new word from the dictionary every day. Maybe it would help him get good grades in English this year, and help him seem less pathetic.

"But seriously, Danny. You're my wing man. I need you."

"Can I be your wing man from the safety of the Nasty Shack? In the shade? With a cold milkshake?"

"Dude, you're killing me."

After quite a bit of nagging and some puppy dog eyes, Tucker managed to wrangle Danny into wingmanship. They set up shop on the sand, half-way between the waterline and Nasty Shack, conspicuously close to the towels of several A-list girls, including Paulina and Valerie. So maybe they'd had to move some other people's stuff to get such a prime location. No one needed to know that.

Danny spread his towel, and his eyes could not help but flick to Valerie every few seconds. In a yellow bathing suit, shiny with tanning oil, basking in the August sun – she was beauty in curvy, female form.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. As long as he didn't have to talk to her, of course.

Nestled among the A-listers' towels was a purple umbrella with white stripes. It so obscured the person under it that Danny didn't realize for several minutes that Samantha Manson was also at the beach that day. Reclined in the shade on one arm, she lay there reading a book, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.

"I don't get it," Danny remarked to Tucker.

Tucker slurped loudly from his milkshake – that was the one part of Danny's counterplan that he had agreed with. "Don't get what?"

"She obviously doesn't like them. They act like she doesn't exist. Why does she hang out with them?"

The techno-geek followed Danny's gaze. "Still hung up on Samantha Manson, huh? If I didn't know any better…"

Danny narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, but I think you do. She's a first-class pain." Regardless, he continued to stare her way. "Still… why not just ditch them?"

"She's rich and mean, they're rich and mean." Tucker shrugged. "They have a lot in common." He laid a hand on Danny's shoulder. "The ways of the upper class are not for us disgruntled peasants to understand."

"Something else I don't understand is why we still like them."

Danny and Tucker in tandem gazed longingly at the pretty girls and sighed.

"We totally still like them."

The tech-nerd suddenly jumped to his feet and pretended to roll up his nonexistent sleeves. "I didn't come here to look and not touch!

"… Okay, that sounded a lot worse than what I meant."

Danny rolled his eyes. "I'll say."

"What I _meant_ was this – I'm tired of not being on the radar. I want in on this. And when a Foley wants something, nothing can stand in his way!"

"And when a Fenton wants something, he usually says something totally embarrassing and scars everyone around him for life. Tuck, seriously, I'll cheer you on from here. Okay?"

Tucker huffed, obviously annoyed. "Fine. Be like that. I'll come back when I've found a girlfriend."

Danny watched his friend walk away, stepping clumsily through the sand. He blinked. "Guess I'll be waiting here a while."

It wasn't long before he heard nearby, "That's TF, as in 'Too Fine'", followed by several "Ugh"s. Danny laughed. That was one thing to be said for his best friend: nothing kept him down for long.

Danny spent a few minutes watching Tucker, then simply people-watching, before he lay back on his towel. He stared up at the swath of blue overhead, dusted here and there with thin clouds. The sun was hot on his skin, but he hardly noticed it. His mind was drifting up into the atmosphere, thinking about how quickly Earth was spinning, the path of the International Space Station in its orbit, which zodiac constellation the sun was currently passing through – Leo. When he looked at the sky, he felt so small. Even Earth felt small. From up there, the oceans became nothing more than blue and white smeared over the surface of the planet, like a bright little marble.

Someday, he'd look down on them from up there.

At some point, the ocean had come to represent for Danny all of the problems in his life. Some people loved the ocean, found it beautiful or majestic or some other nonsense. He couldn't think about it without all of its negative associations surfacing. When he had nearly drowned – his inherent weakness. The trips out on the Boat – how his parents were so far from normal and isolated their whole family from the other residents of this town. The beach – a big collection of all the people he'd never been able to get along with.

But someday, he'd be above it all. That was his lifeline.

He sat up again, resting his arms on his knees. Tucker was now some ways off, being loomed over by a muscular boyfriend. Danny looked back to the A-list girls, and he was shocked to see Samantha Manson looking right back at him. When his eyes met her violet ones, she scowled, shut her book, and stormed out from under her tent.

Danny's eyes followed her all the way to the water, where she waded in and finally ducked under and out of sight.

He glared at the spot where she'd disappeared, feeling at once supremely annoyed and agitated. And frankly, he had to go to the bathroom.

Frown stuck on his face, Danny slipped his feet into his flip-flops and picked his way through the crowd to the bathrooms – narrow, one-person stalls walled by wooden planks. He did his business, and when he came back out, was grabbed by two pairs of very strong hands.

"Hello, Fentwerp," said one voice, which Danny immediately recognized as belonging to Kwan.

And the second said, "You're coming with us."

* * *

><p><em>Two apologies are in order. First - that this chapter is significantly shorter than the first two. Which leads me to the next apology - that it's been nearly two months since the last update. The two are rather linked.<em>

_So, about four months ago, I moved to Japan. There was a honeymoon stage for awhile, and then homesickness and culture shock hit me like a bag of bricks. I went from thinking I was impervious to things like human emotion... to crying myself to sleep every night. Talk about mood swings!_

_I'm fine now, and finally I wanted to write again. Which leads me to this chapter being shorter than the others. I so wanted to put another chapter up, found this sweet cliff-hanger, and couldn't resist!_

_Thank you to everyone who reviewed chapter two! Invader Johnny, Kiomori, Hybridkylin, DB-KT, Guest3, and timelysorrow._

_Chapter Four will exist, I promise. ;D_


End file.
